Best Porn: Dan Savage’s HUMP! Film Festival

Admittedly, Baltimore has its own emerging porn scene. It isn’t Van Nuys or San Francisco, but it can claim Dale Cooper, amateur porn pioneers Jen & Dave, some decent alt-porn Tumblrs, and erotic performer and sex educator Andre Shakti (who now lives in Oakland). So maybe it’s unfair to give the city’s best porn to an out-of-towner, but it’s worth recognizing that crowds spent several nights in October crammed into Hampden’s Gallery 788 to watch amateur porn alongside their fellow Baltimoreans. Now in its twelfth year, the annual event that promises the chance to be a porn star “for a weekend,” tours the country and offers packed venues sex-positive porn that is both funny and sexy. Returning to Baltimore this September (this time at Creative Alliance) the festival of home pornographers presents short films that include bodies one would find in the real world—bodies with a variety of shapes, skin colors, relative ability, gender expression, and sexual orientation.